IDC has recently released its Worldwide Storage Software QView for the first quarter of 2012. In it, IDC estimates that the total Storage Software market for 1Q12 grew about 3.3% over 1Q11.IBM had a solid quarter while Symantec faltered, allowing IBM to take the overall #2 share rank position for 1Q12.

§In the Overall Storage Software Market, IBM moved up to #2 share rank position in 1Q12, gaining 2.0 share points over 1Q11.

§IBM retained its #1 position for Archiving Software growing faster than the market.HP holds #2 spot with its 2011 acquisition of Autonomy.

IBM offers a comprehensive, flexible storage management software portfolio that helps organizations address storage management challenges across the enterprise, including data centers, remote/branch offices and desktop/laptop computers. Learn more about the specific components within the IBM storage software family that can help you create a more responsive and resilient storage infrastructure for your on demand business.

One of the most important ways to optimize performance is to tier your data and storage systems for the right combination of speed, capacity and economy. One of the most advanced storage solutions — hybrid storage — is able to migrate data between tiers as needed.

While cost remains the largest motivating factor for good storage management, business concerns are just as important. You cannot afford to max out storage capacity only to watch your applications fail because they are unable to run. The result may be downtime, lost revenues or lost data. To maximize storage efficiency and optimize storage usage, you want the right data on the right storage tier. You want to see the current distribution of data and the recommended distribution of data based on the tiered thresholds that you set.

After all, data is not created equal. Your business organization might have data that is very highly transactional and a few millisecond hiccup can result in lost business or a even a terrible user experience. For example, think high velocity trading in a online brokerage house. On the other hand, some of your data is rarely accessed, but over time can accumulate to a huge amount. For example, think email archives. This is where the tiered storage solution in IBM Spectrum Control Storage Insights enables you to see past and current trends in capacity and space usage, and based on past and current storage usage can offer recommendations for your storage needs.

In Storage Insights, click Home > Dashboard to see the Tier Planning chart.

To get more information on tier planning, click See Details.

When you go to Insights > Tier Planning, you can see:

The charts that show the current and recommended distribution of the volumes across the tiers that you created

The list of the volumes that are identified as candidates for re-tiering

The Tier Planning page shows you more information about how your data is currently distributed and the recommended distribution of data across the storage tiers. In the table, the volumes that contain data that is not on the right tier is displayed. To maximize storage efficiency and optimize storage usage, you can decide which volumes you want to down-tier.

In the Allocated Space by Tier chart, you can hover the mouse pointer over the column for the tier to see the current and recommended allocation of space for each tier.

You want the data in your data center to be placed on the tiers that best match the performance requirements in your business organization. You place your storage into tiers by assigning tier levels to pools and you set performance thresholds to generate recommendations for your storage. Each time that data is collected, the tiering of your storage is analyzed.

“IBM Spectrum Control Storage Insights from IBM not only delivers a performance dashboard to monitor overall health, but also enables you to drill into and address storage issues affecting service delivery.” - - Johan van Arendonk, Systems Engineer, E-Storage B.V.

So what's next?

Give it a try!

Explore the live demo that contains the actual product with sample data; it’s the quickest way to try out the insightful solutions. You will need an IBM ID to log in. If you do not have an IBM ID, Storage Insights provides a link for you to create one. Follow the guided tutorials for not only tier planning optimization, but troubleshooting performance, monitoring block capacity, monitoring file capacity and identifying reclaimable storage.

Another way to get fast insights into your storage environment is the free 30-day trial. Try the Storage Insights solution by using your IBM ID, or by creating one. After the30-day trial you can easily convert to a subscription.